Langue without speakers

Julia Kristeva notes that Saussure’s linguistic theory permits “linguistics to claim a logical, mathematical formalization on the one hand, but on the other, it definitely prevents reducing a language or text to one law or one meaning.” This latter point is true because by splitting the sign into signified and signifier, Saussure allowed his followers to envision “language as a free play, forever without closure,” though this was never developed by Saussure himself.

Structuralism “seem to explore this epistemological space by eliminating the speaking subject . . . . a subject of enunciation takes shape within the gap opened up between signifier and signified that admits both structure and interplay within; and structural linguistics ignores such a subject. Moreover, because it left its place vacant, structural linguistics could not become a linguistics of speech or discourse; it lacked a grammar, for in order to move from sign to sentence the place of the subject had to be acknowledged and no longer kept vacant.”

Chomskyan generative grammar attempts to restore the subject and grammar, but “in fact, generative grammar is evidence of what structural linguistic omitted, rather than a new beginning; whether structural or generative, linguistics since Saussure adheres to the same presupposition, implicit within the structuralist current, explicit in the generative tendency that can be found summed up in the philosophy of Husserl.”

She continues, but this is enough to raise a question: If Kristeva’s analysis of Saussure is right, then it points to the limits of structuralism as applied to hermeneutics, for hermeneutics is necessarily about discourses and speakers/writers.